unct
unct verb: to anoint, especially a monarch or other patriarchal leader.
Verb
unct (third-person singular simple present uncts, present participle uncting, simple past and past participle uncted)
- To anoint, especially a monarch or other patriarchal leader.
- The King was uncted in the nick of time
- […] and lat thame pray ouir him and unct him with oyle in the name of our Lord, […]1552, ed. Catholic Church, John Hamilton, Thomas Graves Law, The Catechism of John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, 1552, published 1884, page 229
- To lubricate.
- This is also an uncting procedure in which oil is dropped into the nose and expelled through the mouth.2008, Swami Sadashiva Tirtha, The Ayurveda Encyclopedia, →ISBN, page 197
Synonyms of unct
Forms of unct
| third-person singular present | uncts |
|---|---|
| present participle | uncting |
| past participle | uncted |
| past | uncted |
Origin of unct
First appears in Middle English circa 1425, derived from Latin unctus (“anointed”) and related terms. Ayurvedic sense is one of several competing translations of Sanskrit snehana.
Questions about unct
- What does unct mean?
- Unct means to anoint, especially a monarch or other patriarchal leader.
- What part of speech is unct?
- Unct is a verb.
- What is the past tense of unct?
- The past tense of unct is uncted.
Words near unct in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unct (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-unct.wav.
Cite this entry: “unct.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unct. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.